Messaging about corruption: The power of social norms

Abstract

While commonly deployed in anti‐corruption programs, corruption messaging has shown limited success. I argue that strategies focusing on injunctive norms (what most people approve of) have been underutilized and could be a feasible way of influencing perceptions in a desirable direction. In two studies fielded in Mexico, I first identify a substantial discrepancy between how individuals view the permissibility of corruption and their perceptions of other people's attitudes. In a follow‐up preregistered experiment, I leverage this tension by randomly informing a treatment group about people's strong anti‐corruption attitudes. The results show that the treatment group became significantly more positive with regard to the attitudes of others. Moreover, they report higher interpersonal trust, are less likely view corruption as a basic part of Mexican culture, and show lower willingness to bribe. The study contributes to our understanding of corruption as a social phenomenon and provides insights about how to construct effective anti‐corruption messages.

Getting the (right) message across: How to encourage citizens to report corruption

“…A much smaller literature focuses on the impact that messages about corruption have on beliefs and behaviour about corruption and efforts to combat it. To date, six studies have directly assessed the influence of anti-corruption messaging on beliefs about corruption, anti-corruption, and to a more limited extent, "corrupt" behaviour (Agerberg, 2021;Cheeseman & Peiffer, 2020;Chong et al, 2015;Corbacho et al, 2016;Kobis et al, 2019;Peiffer, 2017Peiffer, , 2018. Unlike the literature on messaging and voting behaviour, the findings from these studies are more consistent, with most suggesting that messages about corruption and anti-corruption are at best an ineffective tool with which to fight corruption, or are at worst backfiring to some extent.…”

“…Taken together, these studies suggest messaging is ineffectual, or worse, that it may backfire. The field study conducted by Agerberg (2021) in Mexico is the exception to this rule; he found that informing respondents about people's strong anti-corruption attitudes resulted in them being less willing to engage in bribery. Somewhat remarkably, however, none of these studies assesses whether anti-corruption messaging has an impact on the willingness to report corruption-which is a key objective of anti-corruption campaigns around the world.…”

“…Despite this hypothesizing, very little is known about the impact of anti‐corruption awareness‐raising on citizens' willingness to report. Only a handful of studies have scrutinized anti‐corruption messaging, and almost all of them have focused on its impact on corrupt behaviour (Agerberg, 2021; Cheeseman & Peiffer, 2020; Corbacho et al, 2016; Kobis et al, 2019) or on perceptions of corruption (Chong et al, 2015; Peiffer, 2018), rather than on how messages impact reporting. This is surprising because many anti‐corruption awareness campaigns aim to encourage citizens to get involved in the fight against corruption and, in particular, to report it to the authorities.…”

Norms (Entry for the Encyclopedia of Political Sociology)

“…In all realms where individuals perceive that a given behavior can be deemed more or less acceptable by others, normative influences are likely to affect them. Prominent examples include gender relations (e.g., Felmlee, 1999), intergroup contact (e.g., Mähönen, Jasinskaja-Lahti, and Liebkind, 2011) or tolerance of corruption (e.g., Agerberg, 2022).…”

Getting the message right: what are the impacts of counter-serious and organised crime awareness-raising strategies?

“…The literature on public relations campaigns has so far offered one potential ray of hope. Messages that avoid telling the public how bad the situation is (descriptive norm) and instead emphasise how much the public disapproves of a particular kind of behaviour (injunctive norm)such as organised criminal activitymay encourage hope that the social bad can be tackled, and/or even a rejection of the social bad itself (Widner and Roggenbuck, 2000;Cialdini et al, 2006;Agerberg, 2022). By not highlighting the extent of the problem, injunctive norm messaging is thought to be better placed to reduce the risk of priming pessimistic beliefs, and at the same time promote the idea that the socially acceptable form of behaviour is to reject the social bad (Tankard and Paluck, 2016;Agerberg, 2022).…”